Which university professor of Anglo-Saxon was J.R.R. Tolkien at Oxford from 1925 to 1945?

From 1925 to 1945, J.R.R. Tolkien was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford.

The professorship was held at Pembroke College, Oxford, where Tolkien taught Old English and related subjects. His academic expertise in languages, philology, and medieval literature strongly influenced the invented languages, names, legends, and textual traditions in his fiction.

In 1945, Tolkien moved to Merton College and became the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature. He held that chair until his retirement in 1959. These two Oxford appointments are therefore easy to confuse, especially because both were central to his academic career.

Tolkien’s scholarship included important work on Beowulf. His 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” helped change how the poem was studied by emphasizing its artistic structure and imaginative power.